11.28.06

Issue 8: To Protect and Serve

Headlines

Veteran Rewards: Now players will receive rewards for the time spent playing the game. New costume pieces, badges, powers, pets and more! Something new every 3 months!

Police Band and Safeguard Missions: Calling all Heroes! Bank Robberies, Sewer Bombings, Jail Breakouts and more villainous attacks are in progress! Monitor the police scanner and come to the rescue to thwart these diabolical schemes!

Fautlline: Rebuilding of ruined sections of Paragon City has been a long time goal for the city. The old Overbrook area, known today as Faultline, has made significant restoration progress. However, crime and crisis plague the area, requiring the vigilance of the cities’ Heroes.

COMBINED NOTES

Veteran Rewards

New powers are available across Paragon City and the Rogue Isles: Veteran Rewards! Now, as your account accrues time, in 3 month intervals, your characters will gain access to all new badges, abilities, costume pieces and more! For complete details please visit the Official City of Heroes or City of Villains web site.

Additionally, you can now visit PlayNC.com’s Account Management Page to view details of your account and a listing of which Veteran Rewards are available to it!

Updater

If the update client fails to connect, it will cycle through ports 13094, 6994, 80 and 23094 until it connects. Alternatively the ‘-port’ command line parameter can be used to specify one of these ports (for example: CohUpdater.exe –port 23094).

Pocket D Changes

Arena Kiosks: These Kiosks will allow Heroes and Villains to fight against each other more easily if they want to settle personal issues.

In front of the bars are two arena officials, an "Arena Information Operator", who will provide information on how to use the kiosks; and a "Games Information Operator", who will provide detailed information on each of the game types of the arena.

Rikti Monkey Fight Club: Due to a combination of the Family cutting in to the RMFC profits in Sharkhead, and an offer from DJ Zero to expand their enterprise, Joe Young and Cornelius have moved their "entertainment concern" on up to the Pocket D. They have set up a new "Lounge" on the hero side of the club. “It’s a lot classier than the old place”, says Joe Young.

It’s loud in Pocket D! Local chat in Pocket D will only be heard by players within 50ft of each other now.

Powers

Many objects in the game which were meant to be immune to Teleportation have been made so. This affects several powers in the Traps Secondary and Devices secondary for players.

A large number of powers, most those that involved ground hugging or wall crawling type visual effects, were adjusted to perform better.

Dark Miasma's Tar Patch, Dark Miasma's Dark Servant, and Dark Blast's Life Drain will now play animation and effects when cast.

Altered Moment of Glory to insure that the -Regen portion goes away at the end of the duration of the power.

Added -Fly to Gravity Control Gravity Distortion power.

Jump Kick from the Leaping pool set now does Knock Up instead of Knockback. The chance of Knock Up occurring has increased to 20% (from 15%.)

Removed hesitation from the Mental Blast animation. There was a pause that prevented the character from acting, even after the power had finished animating.

Fixed missing animation for Ice Sword when used with Fly.

Various ‘Build Up’ and ‘Aim’ powers now have a new look.

Increased the base flight speed of Hover by 10%.

Added a slight delay to the usage of Team Teleport. This should alleviate the issue of Teammates randomly being left behind after a Teleport.

Soul Storm is now escapable. There is still a bit of delay after you escape before you can move or attack again, but it’s much less of an ‘I win’ power.

Rikti ambushers will once again show teleportation FX.

The Helmet enhancement (Mutation/Magic - Range) was giving twice the bonus of other Range DOs. It has been reduced to match.

Rebalanced the powers used by some of the high end Longbow critters to make them less frustrating to fight.

Fixed some animation issues with the Jump Jet Pack power granted from the Good vs. Evil Edition.

Tailor

Characters can have tails and wear trenchcoats at the same time

Chest patterns added to have as backdrop for chest emblems

Emblem Blend

Emblem Circle

Emblem Diamond

Emblem Heart

Emblem Shield

Emblem Square

Emblem Star 1

Emblem Star 2

Hair Style "ice" added to huge and male

Hair style "Buzz cut" revamped and added to huge and male

Zombie texture added to the monstrous legs

Jackets and Robes have had there shoulder geometry unified to work better with cape mantles

"Over Shoulder Cape" is available for all types

"Cellular" pattern added to gloves and boots

Military coat for huge and female revamped to fit better, prevent clipping, and to better work with other costume pieces

Some broaches moved to prevent hovering

Samurai belt added to all huge categories

Hoods and Hair reweighed to prevent bald spots when head scaling

New costume pieces are available at the Tailor and at Character Generation:

Titles

Players may now change their title at levels 15, 25, 35, and 45. These title changes do not stack (if you do not use the one you get at level 25 when you reach level 35, you only have the level 35 change, and lose the level 25 one). At 50, players may change their title without restriction. Talk to any trainer to change your title in this manner.

Fixed bug that prevented players from being able to reset their second title to "none".

Bases

Autonomous Expert System can now take a Mission Computer as an Aux Item, and Mystic Orrery can now take an Oracle as an Aux Item. These changes will allow Supergroups that only have those Control sources to run the Cathedral of Pain.

Tasks

An icon will appear on a Contact in the Contact Window when you are on a Story Arc with that Contact. This will let you better manage the Story Arcs you are doing.

Set all PvP zone mission rewards down to the normal mission completion levels.

List of new or updated emotes

Emote Invent

Emote Dance1

Emote Dance2

Emote Dance3

Emote Dance4

Emote Dance5

Emote Dance6

Emote EatDonut

Emote Donut

Emote EatFood

Emote Eat

Emote Food

Emote ListenPoliceBand (Heroes only)

Emote SitChair1

Emote SitChair2

Emote SitChair3

Emote SitBench1

Emote SitBench2

Emote SitBench3

Emote SitBench4

Emote SitExecutiveChair

Emote SitStool

Emote SitTable1

Emote SitTable2

Emote Teabag

Changes specific to CITY OF HEROES

Faultline Redux

Faultline officials recently provided funding for reconstruction and work was underway in the first neighborhood, when major disaster struck. Due to strange seismic activity on the moon, tidal anomalies caused the Overbrook Dam to rupture flooding the zone. Additional crews have been called in to assess the Dam and shore up the rest of the zone, however, they are continually thwarted by the recent arrival of new villain groups to the area and one group, in particular, that no one expected: Arachnos. It appears Arachnos has been poking around supergroup base wreckage in Faultline for some time, searching for technology that will further Lord Recluse’s nefarious plans. Paragon Officials have called in small detachments of the Paragon Police Department and Freedom Corps, but are also asking heroes to come forward and protect the new city.

Features of the "new" Faultline:

Transition from Trial Zone to a City Zone (with Overbrook Dam as a Hazard area)

Level range has been adjusted to 15 – 25

Missions have been added (see Jim Temblor in New Overbrook at the Memorial statue in the park as your initial contact)

Stores, Trainer (Mirror Spirit), and a hospital have been added to Faultline

Police Band Missions

Paragon Police Department contacts have been added to all City Zones except for Atlas Park and Galaxy City. They will be added to a Hero’s contact list as soon as they enter a zone. These contacts will direct characters to missions aiding the PPD in fighting crime in Paragon City.

Once you talk to a PPD Contact, your contact list will have a "Police Band Tuner" added to the top of the list. Clicking this will bring up an assortment of crimes-in-progress.

You will fight level-appropriate Villain Groups in random maps and random mission objectives. Once you have outlevelled a zone, however, you will no longer be able to get Police Band missions in that zone.

In addition to normal missions, the PPD will give out Safeguard Missions. You get Safeguard missions after performing three to five Police Band missions.

Safeguard Missions

Safeguard missions allow the Hero player to enter a large outdoor mission map and defend the city from invading villains. The goal is to defeat the Villain behind the attack, preventing a bank robbery, but there are lots of other things going on, too. Safeguard missions are set up for single players and teams.

Safeguard missions will issue a door in the zone the player is in when mission is accepted (i.e Kings Row Safeguard mission will lead the player to the Kings Row PPD truck door).

When you enter the instance, the bank is immediately being robbed. Don’t delay in getting to the bank, or the crooks could get away with the cash, failing the mission.

A 15 minute timer starts once the bank heist has been stopped and the mission is completed. At this point you can use the given time to secure the map, explore and fight for additional badges and rewards. This allows the players to end the mission quickly, or hunt for additional XP and rewards if they choose.

There are several goals and multiple side missions that can be unlocked and played once the bank robbery has been thwarted. Completing any section of goals or each side mission rewards the players with a special bonus (such as extra XP, temp powers, or unique salvage) and will add some time back to the counter. The more they complete the longer they have to try and complete more goals, so the better they do the higher their rewards.

Giant Monster Spawns Increased

The following Giant Monster Spawns have had their frequency increased:

Kraken - Perez Park

Babbage - Boomtown

Jack in Irons (non-scripted, individual) - Croatoa

Eochai (non-scripted, individual) - Croatoa

Adamastor - Dark Astoria

Jurassik - Crey's Folly

Tasks

The team mission completion option now works for heroes as well as villains.

City Zones

Rikti Crash Site: Taking the portal from Rikti Crash Site to Peregrine Island will no longer get you stuck in the portal ramp.

Dominators

Dominators will now build Domination faster depending on the size of the Team they are grouped with. Each member of the team (aside from the Dominator himself) increases the speed of Domination gain by approximately 16%. Note that this bonus does NOT apply to the existing bonus Assault powers gain in PvP. The maximum bonus to Domination will happen in a full 8 person group.